Ports still not as secure as they need be

Chronic lack of money, red tape hamper efforts, Senate panel told

By CHARLES POPE, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, May 17, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Efforts to fortify Seattle's port as well as others across the nation against terrorist attacks are hampered by a chronic lack of money and bureaucrat barriers that make it hard to determine whether the spending actually makes them more secure, a Senate committee was told yesterday.

To underscore the problems, Wrightson highlighted an effort to provide transportation workers identification cards that would improve the odds that only authorized personnel are allowed access to sensitive areas. Three years after the effort began, however, cards have not been produced, forcing individual ports to develop a system on their own.

The Coast Guard estimates it will cost $5.4 billion over the next 10 years to bring all ports up to security standards required by Congress. Despite that mandate, Congress has approved only $150 million this year for port security.

The American Association of Port Authorities says $400 million must be provided each year if ports are to meet the security upgrades required by law. That much money is unlikely, however.

That prompted the committee chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, to suggest a federal trust fund for port security. The fund would be financed by a tax on imports.

Mick Shultz, spokesman for the Port of Seattle, said Stevens' idea would backfire. Adding a surcharge on foreign shippers, he said, would drive traffic to ports in Canada and Mexico.

After hearing the assessment, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., was alarmed by the lack of alarm.

"I've never had a feeling that there's been any coordination at Homeland Security. There is nothing but a total lack of preparation. The concept here of preparation is classically American where everybody waits for everybody else. I'm just struck by the calmness ... and the satisfaction you have in what you're doing."

Problems are plaguing the port security grant program. Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, told the committee that the department provided grants for some "dubious" proposals and of the $560 million approved since 2001 only $106 million has actually been spent.

Part of the reason, Skinner explained, is that some grants were approved even though the Department of Homeland Security did not have a clear idea of how the money would be spent. The spending was delayed, he said, because decisions about how to use the money had to be negotiated after the grants were approved.

Skinner also said that $75 million was awarded to ports even though the department determined "that these projects did not merit funding."

The port of Seattle has done relatively well, collecting $75.4 million over the past three years for security. The Port of Tacoma has received $32.9 million. The money paid for vulnerability assessments, upgrades to surveillance equipment and access controls, fencing, lighting and utility protection.

Shultz said Seattle's total is a bit misleading because the port has received money from other federal sources that improve security. Among those is Operation Safe Commerce, a program that aims to secure ships at their port of origin and track them as they move to delivery in the United States.

In 2002, more than 7 million cargo containers were delivered to U.S. ports yet only 5 percent of those containers were inspected.